Great Western Coffee Shop

I honestly thought crewe was WCML only - and in the past have only ever seen pendolinos there


But yesterday there was a five car jobby with first class in the first coach and four standard classes - shouted to be a voyager

The Virgin WCML services from Birmingham to Edinburgh and Glasgow are formed of Voyagers, despite running under the wires for the complete journey. They were split off from CC with the change of franchsie (or a month later to be precise.)

Virgin now have a fleet of class 221 tilting Super Voyagers. As John R stated, those services are operated by Voyagers, as well as some London - Holyhead/Chester/Llandudno services.

I posted elsewhere that we must be mad to run diesels under the wires and that was for part of journey because it's not "economitcal" to sling wires over the diesel leg. So we run a DMU instead of loco hauled with traction change.

To run Diesel Birmingham to Glasgow must make us collectively insane. It would make us  totally off the planet, if as has been suggested elsewhere, it is cheaper for Virgin to run a DEMU (note the E for electric) rather than an electric train. We can never have a rational transport policy. 

Perhaps we should ask Bulgaria for our 87s back.

There is a competiton for a British slogan. I suggest. "Mad as a Hatter

It is true. I read that the Voyagers are cheaper to run than the Pendalinos. Add the fact that they have the same acceleration and top speed (not to mention the tilt), then it is not surprising that Virgin are simplifying the service.

Changing a loco at Crewe would slow down services- yes it may be for 10 mins, but it is still a wait. Time = money, plus they have a hugely frequent timetable from December, so they have no time to waste.

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Voyagers have always gone through Crewe (since they arrived) on Virgin XC services which went to GLasgow, and West Coast services to Holyhead.

But with the split of VWC and XC this is the first time whereby such long distances have been timetabled to be diesel powered completely under the wires.

Madness!


With proper track layouts and auto couplers a loco change should not take more than 2/3 minutes. The problem at the moment is that at Crewe the waitng loco has to stand some way out of the station  on the Chester line and wait for the departing loco to pass it before it can back onto the train. An engine layby just off the platform would allow quick change. At most places you'd want to change there's plenty of space to put in such facilities.

Remember when the Cross Countries used to run round in Platform 8 at Reading, they consistenly used to do that in 3 minutes, and that included the shunter physically uncoupling and coupling.  Leicester Central used to pride itself on its fast loco changes in steam days.